The clock at the head of the stairs struck the hour of eleven. Cassandra sat in the middle of the large bed, propped against a half dozen pillows, and furtively watched the closed door to the hallway. She had carefully set the scene with a few strategically placed candles, a small fire burning in the fireplace, one of the draperies drawn back to allow a spill of moonlight to fall across the bed. But now it seemed so staged, so artificial—like something out of an old Bette Davis movie—that she had gone from nervous excitement to just plain scared.
Dressed in a lovely white nightgown trimmed with fine Mechlin lace and sheer enough to have come straight out of a Victoria’s Secret catalog, she had felt marvelously seductive when she slipped between the sheets to await her “lover.” But an hour’s wait, now more than an hour’s wait, had found her rethinking her fantasy.
Perhaps she shouldn’t be in the bed when Marcus entered. That was sort of pushing things. Perhaps she should be seated at her writing desk, a paisley shawl all but falling off her shoulders, a pen in her hand, as if she were writing a letter, or some lines of poetry?
Or she could be sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair. Then Marcus could enter—dressed in his banyan, which was what Regency types called their bathrobes—and come up behind her, pull back her hair, and plant a kiss on her exposed neck. No. She didn’t have enough hair to carry off that particular scenario.
One thing was certain, She couldn’t stay in this bed, like some sort of sacrificial lamb or some sort of predator awaiting her prey. Throwing back the covers, she slid to the edge of the mattress, her nightgown hiked up near her hips, and began searching the floor for her slippers. She would go to the window, the one with the pulled-back draperies, and stand staring through the panes at the stars. That would be romantic, without pushing the point.
“Where the hell are my slippers?” she questioned aloud in exasperation, hopping from the bed. She dropped to her knees and began searching under it. Candlelight might be romantic, but she sure could use a flashlight. With her rump pointing skyward, she stuck her head under the bed frame and extended one hand, sweeping it back and forth over the bare floorboards. “Damn it—what did they do, go for a walk?”
At the slight squeaking of an opening door she froze, her hand just closing around one of the elusive slippers, and she became embarrassingly aware of her undignified position. Dropping her forehead to the cool floorboards, and thankful that the bed ruffle covered her head, she mumbled bleakly, “Marcus?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” came the deep-throated, obviously amused answer from somewhere behind her. “However, if you’re looking for me under the bed, I have to tell you that I’m not there. Or have you changed your mind, and are you in the act of hiding from me?”
She lifted her head from the floor, then softly banged it against the wood three times. “Dumb, dumb, dumb. Oh, God—I’m such a klutz!” she murmured before carefully backing out from under the bed ruffle and slowly getting to her feet. “Hi there. I lost my slippers—but I’ve found one of them—see,” she said brightly, much too brightly, giving him a small wave with the hand holding the slipper before wrapping her arms around her body, trying to pretend she wasn’t standing directly in front of a small brace of candles whose light had undoubtedly turned her nightgown into little more than a revealing veil of cobwebs.
“Congratulations, my dear,” Marcus answered as she dared to look at him, seeing that he was indeed dressed in his nightclothes, a deep burgundy silk banyan tied tightly at his waist. He looked so good. So big. So handsome. He held out his hand and she automatically placed the slipper in it. “I think we can dispense with your search for its mate, don’t you? Unless you plan to go for a stroll?”
She shook her head. “A stroll? Me? Now? Nope, I don’t think so,” she said quickly, the words tumbling over each other as she dared a peek at the bed and then all but dived under the covers, pulling them up to her neck. Oh, boy, she thought, wincing, as she realized what she had done. Great work, Sherlock. You’re right back where you started.
His smile nearly destroyed her, for she was convinced he was laughing at her, seeing her for what she really was—an inept, clumsy, disaster-prone idiot who couldn’t pull off a romantic assignation if she had a week to prepare for it. A year.
“I’ve taken the liberty of bringing us some wine,” Marcus said, using the slipper to point across the room, so that for the first time she noticed the silver tray holding a decanter and glasses that sat on her desk. “Shall I pour you a measure?”
Her tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth, she only nodded, wildly wondering how Sheila Cranston would handle this particular situation. One whole hell of lot better than you’re doing, sweetcakes, her brain announced in mocking tones, so that Cassandra felt tears stinging behind her eyes. What was wrong with her? She loved Marcus, truly loved him. Why was she carrying off this interlude with all the panache of a hippopotamus stuck in an elevator?
Marcus, now minus the slipper and holding two filled glasses, perched himself on the side of the bed, his position not in the least threatening, even if his proximity had her toes curling under the covers. “Here you are, my dear. I suggest you sip it.”
She took the glass and downed its contents in one long gulp, wishing it were Scotch and water—not that she was ever a heavy drinker. “So much for suggestions,” she said, handing him the empty glass. “Marcus—I’m not too clear on this point, so I’ll ask you, okay? Is England prone to earthquakes?”
He leaned forward to place the wineglasses on the nightstand, then looked at her, frowning in the moonlight. “Earthquakes? We’ve had a few. Why?”
Cassandra nervously plucked at the bedcovers. “No reason. Well, that’s not quite true. There is a reason. You see, I never get away with anything. Honestly. You already know about Brad the Bod. Well, the first—the first time we, you know, the first real time, my dormitory caught on fire. And then—and then there was the time I had this crush on Josh McCabe in the ninth grade. We were taking an English exam and I was whipping right through that test, when all of a sudden Josh poked me in the back and handed me a note asking for the answer to number seven. I knew it, of course—and I gave it to him. I figured he’d appreciate it so much he wouldn’t notice the braces on my teeth, or the fact that I hadn’t really developed as much as the other girls in my class.”
“But?” Marcus prompted, resting his hand on top of hers as her nervous plucking had begun to wreak havoc with one of the embroidered roses.
“See? Even you knew there had to be a ‘but’ involved in anything I do. But Mr. Hendricks saw me pass the note back to Josh and I got sent to the principal’s office for cheating. Me! Not Josh. The other kids made fun of me for days, and Josh took Melissa Sanderson to the freshman mixer anyway—that’s a dance, Marcus. God, how I hated Melissa and her straight teeth and her thirtysix-C cup. Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that I just can’t get away with anything. I don’t know how to pull it off, I guess. I always end up in some kind of trouble.”
“Hence your question about earthquakes,” Marcus said, lifting her hand to his lips. “Do you really believe that making love with me will cause this house, perhaps even this entire city, to tumble down around our heads?”
She felt the imprint of his lips burning on her skin, so that her throat constricted, making it difficult to swallow. She pulled her hand away and pressed it against her cheek. “Possibly—at least figuratively. I just think it’s only fair that I warn you. I mean, look how we met in the first place, for crying out loud. I was breaking the rules when I stumbled down that rabbit hole of a flight of stairs and into the blue mist. Every time I break the rules it’s like I’m begging for some sort of disaster to strike. And then tonight—tonight”—her voice broke on a small sob—“tonight I wanted everything to be so perfect. You don’t know how I planned for this, Marcus. It all seemed so good in theory, but in practice? Think about it, Marcus—you came in here tonight expecting to find a woman waiting for you, and instead you stumbled over an idiot stuck half under her bed, bobbing for slippers. God, Marcus,” she wailed, falling back against the pillows and pulling the covers up over her head, “How can you be depending on me to save your life? I can’t do anything right!”
She lay very still, waiting for him to leave the room, disgusted with her, and had to bite back a sob when she felt the bed shift beneath her as he stood up. Counting to ten, waiting for the sound of a door opening and closing again behind him, she held her breath, expelling it only when the mattress shifted once more and she became aware of the fact that he was now lying on the bed, beside her.
A moment later he had removed the covers from her face, slowly sliding them down until they rested just above her breasts. “Much as I appreciate your warning, Cassandra, I’ve decided I like living dangerously,” he said, the back of his knuckles softly stroking her cheek. She looked over at him and saw that his banyan was gone, as were the rest of his nightclothes. His long body was stretched out on top of the covers for her examination, and with the help of the candlelight and moonlight that spilled across the bed she drank in the sight of his bared chest, his long, straight legs, his—
“Oh, you’re good, Marcus,” she whispered hoarsely, raising her eyes to his face, to his wonderfully handsome, lovable, and openly loving face. “I don’t have much in the way of personal experience, but I’ve seen all of Kevin Costner’s movies; and I can tell you this—you’re very, very good.”
“And you talk too much,” he responded, inching closer to her so that he could place small kisses on her bared arm, then moving his lips provocatively from her elbow to her shoulder:
Cassandra closed her eyes and pressed her head back against the pillows as his lips began blazing a trail across her shoulder and up the length of her throat, lingering just at her ear, his tongue and teeth doing things to her equilibrium that she hadn’t believed possible while she was lying flat on her back in bed.
She felt the covers receding from her body and her nervousness ebbed along with them, exposing her to his view, exposing her to the heat of his body as he moved marginally, pressing himself against her hip, and then ever further, searing the soft skin of her belly through the sheer material of her nightgown, branding her as his own.
And then he moved again, his actions swift yet tender. A moment later her nightgown was gone, discarded right along with the remainder of her inhibitions.
Cassandra had never felt less gauche, less inclined to disaster, than she did as Marcus tilted her head toward his with his fingertips and claimed her mouth. She opened her lips to him, and he took up the invitation, his tongue making rapid inroads on her belief that sex, while really not all that bad with Brad, probably hadn’t ever really lived up to its advertisements.
His hands were everywhere, but not in the wildly groping way she had experienced with Brad. This was a man who knew what he was about, whose lovemaking was just that—a sharing of love, and not a taking of territory; an action born of desire, and not a selfish indulgence in which she might as well be nothing more than a mildly interested spectator.
Marcus moved his fingers around the fullness of her breasts, across the sensitive skin of her rib cage, and into the moist nest between her legs. Cassandra felt beautiful, cherished, as he spoke sweet love words in her ear before he moved to her breasts, his mouth claiming one tightly budded nipple, then the other, coaxing them into full flower as he cupped, kneaded, caressed, with his hand.
She opened her legs as she was no longer able to keep up a show of feminine modesty, of typical Regency “missish” prudency. Marcus was magically lighting small fires of desire with every light stroke of his fingers as he gently probed her most secret parts. The fires built, glowing white-hot behind her tightly closed lids as they combined to make a single all-consuming conflagration, so that she felt almost feverish with desire.
It was all so beautiful, so dazzling, so perfect—but it was not enough. She needed him, needed him deep inside her, holding her tightly in his strong arms, quenching the fires with the power of his love or burning them both to a crisp with the flames of his passion. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Not as long as they perished together, soared above the constraints of the flesh together—were reborn together, as the phoenix had risen from the ashes.
She raised her arms and moved to hold Marcus closer, to feel his heated skin beneath her fingers as she slid her hands over his shoulders and down his smoothly muscled back. So strong. So perfect. So unbelievably, heartbreakingly wonderful.
And now, now that she held him, a new sensation built deep within her and intensified her desire a thousandfold. This was more than lovemaking, more than a mere delight of the senses. She could feel it growing, crowding out everything save the awareness of a yawning emptiness that only Marcus could fill, an expanding hunger that mere food would never satisfy. It had taken her twenty-five years and a time leap of nearly two centuries, but at last she knew why she had been born. Not only to save Marcus, but to love him.
To be loved by him.
Forever.
Without conscious thought she began to move her hips, and she rubbed herself against his hardness—feeling his hand on her breast was no longer adequate to her newly discovered but rapidly mushrooming needs. His mouth was driving her steadily toward ecstasy—steadily, yet not fast enough. She moved her hands lower, to his buttocks, guiding him fully on top of her, so that she could wrap her legs around his.
He lifted his head, looking down at her through the moonlight, the soft candlelight—his dark eyes questioning. “Cassandra, my sweet darling—so soon?”
The old Cassandra would have been embarrassed, and instantly awkward, mumbling something inane and digging herself a figurative hole to throw herself into. But this was the new Cassandra, reborn only moments earlier, in this room, in this man’s arms, and she had never been more sure of herself, of anything, in either her old life or this new, enlightened incarnation.
She gazed up at Marcus, loving the way his dark hair tumbled forward onto his forehead, loving the way she could actually see his pulse beating frantically in his throat, loving the way he looked down at her as if she were the most precious, wonderful creature he had ever seen. Loving him.
“Do you love me, Marcus?” she asked, shuddering as his thumb lightly grazed her nipple, sending blissful, shivering signals to her nether regions. “Will you always love me, no matter what the future has in store for us?”
His smile almost broke her heart. “I will love you, Cassandra Kelley, until there is no past, no present, and no future. I will love you forever.”
Laughing, crying, she opened herself to him completely, saying, “In that case, my darling marquess, it can never be too soon for us. We have the rest of the night, the rest of our lives, to take it slow.”
It was only as dawn began to break over Grosvenor Square that Marcus gathered up his nightclothes, kissed Cassandra one last, lingering time, and slipped back to his own bedchamber. Snuggling deep under the covers, her body still warm from his loving, she realized her most beloved marquess had been wrong. There had been an earthquake in the mansion last night, a devastating, heart-stopping, truly glorious shifting of the earth—only the phenomenon had been confined to Cassandra’s room and the high, wide tester bed.